Downey students earning D’s and F’s with greater frequency

DOWNEY — Downey Unified School District is seeing a “significant increase” in D and F grades across the middle and high school levels, according to officials.

The disappointing statistic is nothing unheard of during a time where many districts and their students are continuing to adapt to a completely remote way of learning.

“This is a phenomenon that has been experienced across the nation with distanced learning,” said Assistant Superintendent Roger Brossmer at DUSD’s Board meeting on Tuesday. “What we’re seeing is a spreading out of students. We actually have more A’s and B’s and we have more D’s and F’s.”

“What we’re seeing is kids that are successful - have a workspace, have a computer that works, have people helping them – are doing well. Those kids who are not are doing worse.”

Brossmer described the widening gap as “disconcerting,” however indicated that the district was already looking at opportunities to intervene.

“We know it’s not any one thing,” said Brossmer. “A lot of our kids are dealing with social / emotional issues; they’re isolated. Some are struggling because they don’t have the support. The reason I bring this up is there’s not one answer that’s going to fit all kids.”

Students also may be struggling with their own accountability with regards to their schoolwork and Zoom, and are not taking advantage of office hours.

“[Students] have been trained their whole career in Downey Unified by every teacher [to stay on task],” said Brossmer. “Now that they’re home, the teacher gives the assignment, they log off. Now they have their Playstation, their music. We’re really seeing it’s hard for our kids; we just haven’t trained them to be this self-starting, self-motivated students.”

“That’s what we’re seeing in kind of a nutshell, is they don’t have that accountability once they log off of Zoom. So, we’re really working on how we keep kids on Zoom. You’re going to see all of our secretaries really working with schedules now that once they do the minimum thirty [minutes], that - especially kids that are struggling – they stay on.”

Still, Brossmer said that Downey could be facing “One of the largest summer schools in the history of Downey Unified.”

“We’re hoping that some of the interventions we put in place will address second semester, but we still now have a hole from first semester,” said Brossmer. “We can try to fix some of that, but we now are anticipating a huge summer school…”

Students will also not likely be able to fall back on an adapted credit / no credit system.

“At this point, we’re not recommending that,” said Brossmer. “Last year, the colleges let out and said, ‘Hey, no harm no foul to your kids if you do credit / no credit. They have not done that this year.”

“We’re hesitant to make a credit / no credit call that potentially could hurt our students.”

The board will discuss the option to reduce the number of required units for graduation for the class of 2021 at its next meeting.